My Dinosaur Life

"But the current pulled us down, and the smallest ones would drown.”

(Her)

The room is dark, and I can hear my heart beating steadily faster with each passing second.

My bare skin is damp with sweat.

The weight of his body presses down on mine.

His lips are glued to my neck while his hands wander my body.

But something is off.

It’s not that I don’t know what city we’re in, because I can never keep small details like that in my head.

I’m thinking it has to do with the amount of alcohol I’ve consumed at the bar mixing with the pills in my stomach from earlier.

I feel his hot breath on my neck.

I reach up to wind my fingers into his hair only to notice it’s scant where it used to be full.

At that moment, I realize it’s not Justin on top of me.

At that moment, I feel claustrophobic and trapped.

I’m drowning.

I push him off immediately, hitting his chest so he gets the message.

“What the fuck?” he demands in annoyance, rolling off of me.

“Get out,” I manage to say, arranging the blankets to cover my bare body, even though it’s dark.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he asks, collecting his clothes scattered on the floor.

My head spins and I feel dizzy and sick with nausea.

“I said…get- get the fuck out,” I stammer, attempting to keep my sick feeling inside while the room spins. My eyes blur with the tears I refuse to spill and my heart beats rapidly with a panic attack waiting to happen.

“Bitch,” he spits in irritation, jamming his clothes back on as he walks out the door.

With the click of the heavy door, I scramble to rip apart my suitcase, looking for what I need.

I fumble over the bottle of pills as my heart rate picks up and my eyesight blurs with more and more tears while I drop more and more pills into my shaking palm.

More.

I always need more.

I pick up a few items of clothing from the crappy hotel carpet and clumsily put them back on.

I dry swallow pills that go down as easily as the tears freely flowing down my face.

My fingers fumble and my hands shake as I reach for my phone, trying to dial the right number.

My movements are slow, but I manage eventually.

“Annie?” he asks, sounding confused and half-asleep.

I have no idea what time it is.

“Justin,” I choke out. “I’m sorry.”

“Wh-”

I hang up.

He calls back.

I pass out on the bed.

It’s shit, but it’s true.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

In the morning is when I realize my mistake.

In the morning is when I wake up with one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had and my cellphone vibrating continuously with missed calls and voicemails, surely all from Justin.

In the afternoon is when Chelsea finds me nearly passed out, delirious, and slurring nonsensically on the bathroom tile, throwing up three days’ worth of meals, it feels like.

In the afternoon is when I wake up to her screaming at me with tears in her eyes because she thinks I’ve almost accidentally killed myself, again.

In the evening is when she’s calmed down because I can walk and talk again.

In the evening is when Chelsea cleans me up before dinner so that our bandmates won’t judge me like I already know they do.

It hasn’t been the same with them, not for awhile now.

It’s shit, but it’s true.

How I’m always so terrified they’ll judge me like everyone else does when my face occasionally happens to appear on the magazines next to the packs of minty buy-one-get-one-free gum at grocery stores, the ones with my face in the corner that tell you to turn to page seventy-one for full details of who I was with and where.

How the only two people I can trust are Justin and Chelsea, but how they can’t trust me back, not anymore.

How I hate myself for cheating on Justin, and not even on purpose, just because I was out of it from mixing medication with alcohol, just because I was stupider than usual.

How I have to call him crying on the phone again, to hear him yell at me after my pathetic excuses that I was lonely and confused and drugged up, and how I never meant anything to happen-

And he says, “I love you, Annie. Just don’t do it again-” that’s all he says after his yelling and my crying jag-

-and I want to die, I want to drown, for hurting him.

But I won’t let it happen again.

Never again.

I’ve learned my lesson.